Page 22 of Kiss Kiss Bang
She laughed, settling back in her seat, and they drove the three miles in silence.
* * *
The Greenery was basically a no-frills salad bar. He’d wanted to take her somewhere nice. Woo her. The woman had picked a $9.99 all-you-can-eat salad bar. This was absolutely not what he’d had in mind, except that as she loaded two plates of food, she had a big delighted smile on her face. “So you’re a health nut.”
She sat down and slid one plate in front of him. “Health?” She looked down at her plate. “There’s bacon, ham, eggs, and ranch dressing on this. This probably has more calories than a burger.”
He picked up a crouton and popped it in his mouth. “Then why aren’t we eating a burger?” he mumbled under his breath.
“Try this. I promise you’ll like it. Then after, we can have a sundae. They have chocolate sauce and we can eat as much of it as we want.” She looked over at the self-serve ice cream bar.
“Are you trying to bribe me?”
She crinkled her nose. “Sorry. Habit.” She stabbed a big piece of bacon with her fork and popped it in her mouth. “We can go next door and get pizza. Seriously, it’s fine with me.”
He picked up his fork and moved things around. “I don’t think there’s anything green here.” He chuckled. “Basically, you like a shit ton of croutons, bacon, ham, and dressing.” He grabbed a forkful. “I can handle this.” The truth was, he didn’t hate vegetables. He just thought of this as an appetizer, not a meal. And it wouldn’t have been his meal of choice but he didn’t hate it.
“There’s salad in there. Look.” She pointed at him with a fork. “There’s carrots.”
“So, tell me more about yourself. Other than your weird obsession with salad.”
“It’s not weird. I’m just sick of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets.” She stuck out her tongue playfully. “Anyway, I’m sure you know everything about me already. I thought you broke into my e-diary.”
“Har har.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked between bites.
“Everything.”
“That’s a lot.” She looked up and then began to talk. “I moved to Miami when I was seventeen. Somehow I landed a job in a company that did cleaning for other companies, mostly at night while they were closed. I did that for about two years and one of the places I used to clean was the school board offices. I saw that they were hiring a temp for a secretary while another woman was on maternity leave and I applied. I don’t know how I got the job since I had no experience nor skills. But I did.”
“And you quit working at night.”
“No,” she said. “I worked both jobs. Nine to five during the day and from ten till three in the morning at night.”
“Wow.” He admired her work ethics and independence a lot. He’d always had his family’s help and encouragement—without it, he wasn’t sure where he’d be.
“Yeah. But I was young and had energy and I really wanted to make it on my own.” She shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Anyway, one thing led to another and they kept me on and eventually I quit my night job and went to work full time at the school board.”
“And Neil. How’d you meet him?”
“When I first noticed that Lawrence—“
“That was the superintendent? The one embezzling?” he interrupted. He’d read about it online. The guy had been a world class dickhead.
“Yeah. Money went missing. A lot. Mostly reallocated. I wasn’t sure what to do. And as rumors started to spread, I was afraid I’d somehow get accused of knowing or . . . I don’t know, I just wasn’t sure what to do. So, I went to see an attorney.”
“Neil.”
“Nope. I saw three other attorneys before I met Neil. No one wanted to get involved or take the case. He encouraged me to go forward and we worked hard at getting all my ducks in a row before coming forward with the allegations. We had to go straight to the state attorney, who was likely already looking into the situation.”
“And you fell in love with your attorney.”
“Very Erin Brockovich, the entire thing,” she said, with a watery smile. This was too heavy, so he directed the conversation elsewhere.
“And you somehow became the fearless secretary that took down the big bad guy stealing from the less fortunate.”
“Something like that. I never thought I’d go into politics, but here I am. Running for governor.”
